Performer

Ann and Ezra rehearsing with the London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Hall, London 1986

Re-locating with Ezra to Fort Worth Texas in 1969, Ann had to restrict her London activities to the school holidays when she successfully ran Holiday Fun with Music.

In Texas, Ezra, recognising her unique gift for communicating with children, engaged her to appear with a full symphony orchestra in front of an audience of fifteen hundred children. At first Ann was nervous at the thought, but with Ezra’s encouragement, she walked out on stage to perform “The Golden Cockerel” by Rimsky Korsakov. The children sat entranced and Ann discovered that what had worked so well with groups of thirty, were equally successful before an audience of thousands.

From 1970-72, Ann ran Fun with Music®™ in Brisbane, Australia where Ezra was Chief Conductor of the Queensland Symphony. She toured with the orchestra on the Northern Tour, performing for children in the outback who had never seen a ‘live’ orchestra. At her concerts for the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) in May 1971 in Brisbane, the queues for her concerts were so long that the waiting children started drinking water from the fountains and the ABC had to broadcast ‘House Full’ warnings on the radio.

In 1973 when the Rachlins returned to London, Ann reopened Fun with Music®™ and for the next thirty years had a waiting list of three and a half years. In 1986 she gave a series of “Funtasia” concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ezra Rachlin in the Barbican Concert Hall and sponsored by the Sainsbury Trust.